Tower Colliery’s farewell

Farewell to Tower Colliery – and best wishes to all the miners who made the final march from the pit today.Tower, a workers’ co-operative, was the last deep coal mine in South Wales. It is a remarkable story, which has been told many times. Despite the understandable mythologizing, the colliery has always been about basic realities: a desire to work and to maintain a vibrant local economy.As such the miners are already thinking about the future of the site and finding new ways of creating employment.As chairman Tyrone O’Sullivan told the BBC today: “I believe our company can leave a legacy to the community that will see today’s toddlers able to find a job up in the valleys when they’re 16 or 17, instead of having to leave the area.“It will be the greatest tribute that the workers could give. We’ll be leaving jobs, not statues.”A towering legend indeed.